


you'll always be my hero (even though you've lost your mind)

by injeong



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, Angst, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Datekougyou | Date Tech, Demon Oikawa Tooru, Final Haikyuu Quest, Heavy Angst, I also did some fanart for this too, M/M, Nor does it end happily, Platonic Aofuta, Seijoh | Aoba Johsai, Songfic, i warned you, oifuta - Freeform, this is not a fluffy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injeong/pseuds/injeong
Summary: Futakuchi had not known who the Demon King was. Not for a long time.When he had found out, he had not been sure what he had felt first. The happiness of finding again the new identity of the Oikawa whom he had been saved by when they were children - or the despair of knowing that the ruthless Demon King and the small, bright demon-child with the blue magic were the same person.(Inspired from the lyrics of Eminem - Love The Way You Lie ft. Rihanna)





	you'll always be my hero (even though you've lost your mind)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3x3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3x3/gifts).



_On the first page of our story_  
_The future seemed so bright_  


Futakuchi first met Oikawa when he was seven.

The shadows had crept through the trees quicker than he had realized, and when he finally looked up at the sky it had been dark - too dark. He had wandered too far into the forest - he had only realized that then, scrambling up off the fallen log and remembering that he did not know which direction he had to go back to reach his guild. He knew it was dangerous. There were monsters in these woods - though they never came out during the day, he knew that once the darkness fully settled in forest, the monsters would awake and he would be the first prey of the night. Unlike some of the other guild children, he still hadn't learned attack magic, and the small stone knife in his hand would not be able to save him.

The stars were barely visible through the interwoven arms of the trees - he had tried to remember what Moniwa-san had once taught him about using the stars to navigate when he had no compass or map, but nothing came to mind.

If he stayed where he was, then the monsters would inevitably find him and he would die. If he tried to walk away through the forest, there was a chance that he would go the wrong direction and end up wandering deeper into the depths of the forest, and then it would be certain that he would never be able to return alive.

It had barely been twenty minutes when Futakuchi had heard a twig snap behind a tree, and seen a long, ragged shape curling out of sight into the shadows. Up in the branches of a tree, he had crouched, frozen with terror, the small stone knife in his hand seeming as useless as a feather against the powerful, looming presence that he was painfully aware of that surrounded him.

The monster knew he was there. The red eyes glinted, bright and piercing and sharp through the blackness of the trees, and Futakuchi had made no noise nor movement but he knew that he had been spotted.

A low growl, a dark shape slinking closer and closer. A violent lunge -

And a bolt of bright blue light, knocking the monster sideways and dropping it in a writhing heap on the forest floor, before it crumbled away into ash.

That was when Oikawa had stepped out from the shadows - a child just like he was. A demon-child, two small, black horns curving up from his brown hair. Eyes wide and bright and red like the monster, but a different kind of red - a softer one, a kinder, gentler, happier red. Hands still glowing blue as the magic ebbed away, even as he outstretched them to Futakuchi, helping him up from where he had fallen.

 _Then this thing turned out so evil_  
_I don't know why I'm still surprised_

That was the first time Futakuchi saw Oikawa.

The second time he saw Oikawa was the next day, when he ran into the forest again to find the new friend he had made the night before.

He played with Oikawa in the forest for a week, then a month, then a year, then two. Each time, Oikawa greeted him with a smile, a laugh, and they would spend hours chasing each other through the trees, talking about each other, and Futakuchi had looked up to Oikawa as someone incredible. Not just someone who had saved him, but someone who was older, clever, kinder than he was, more proficient at magic and understanding people and so many other things that Futakuchi wouldn't have been able to list. To him, Oikawa had been the kind of person he wanted to be like when he grew up. A kind of hero.

And then Oikawa stopped going to the forest.

 _Even angels have their wicked schemes_  
_And you take that to new extremes_  


Futakuchi kept going to the forest even after Oikawa had stayed missing. Each time he went deeper, further into the darkness, each time he broke out of the grasp of the trees' shadows with the sun further below the horizon, staying out later and later each night to try and find him.

But he never did.

At some point, Futakuchi stopped going to the forest.

He started taking more time to train, with both his magic and his swords, taking quest after quest from his guild with his guildmates, fighting monsters, bandits, and always looking into the crowds to see if maybe, just maybe, he might find a familiar demon-child with kind red eyes and two black horns. Always asking, always searching.

Nobody knew anything about a demon-child with Oikawa's name.

Now he was seventeen, and the quests that his guild are receiving were becoming unnervingly similar. Requests for help, to save the trapped from collapsed buildings and to help the defenseless victims from bandits as they tried to rebuild the smoking, obliterated rubble that was once their home. Village after village, reduced to the same smoking ruins, and always, the villagers would cry and curse the Demon King that had destroyed their village and murdered their kinsmen and family.

 _But you'll always be my hero_  
_Even though you've lost your mind_

Futakuchi had not known who the Demon King was. Not for a long time.

When he had found out, he had not been sure what he had felt first. The happiness of finding again the new identity of the Oikawa whom he had been saved by when they were children- or the despair of knowing that the ruthless Demon King and the small, bright demon-child with the blue magic were the same person.

 _Just gonna stand there and watch me burn_  
_But that's all right because I like the way it hurts_  


Futakuchi had left his guild soon after. It had not been uncommon for guild members to travel out and complete their self-assigned quests, and his guildmates had not seen a problem with Futakuchi leaving.

He had never truthfully told them why he left.

To seek out the Demon King, to see if he really was the same demon-child that saved him and played with him and was his friend and hero.

After weeks and months of searching, Futakuchi had found the castle, a grey, jagged smudge on the side of a shadowed mountain. He had not known then what he would do once he arrived, what he would say. He still had not known even as he was being led up to the castle gates by the masked guards.

Seeing the Demon King, unmistakably the same face that he remembered, and yet so utterly different, so cold and indifferent in comparison to the bright and caring child from his memories, Futakuchi thought he knew what he had to do.

 _Just gonna stand there and hear me cry_  
_But that's all right because I love the way you lie_

He thought he was doing the right thing, that he knew what he was doing.

To save the Demon King from depravity, because the kindness of the demon-child must still reside in that body somewhere, and Futakuchi could not bear to watch as the soul grew dark and thick and rotten.

After months of servitude in the castle, Futakuchi thought he knew why he couldn't bring himself to leave.

He thought he was trapped there. He wouldn't be allowed to leave, not now that he knew the specific location, not now that he knew so many members of the Demon King's court, not that now the Demon King knew his face and name.

After two years of entrapment, Futakuchi knew why he stayed.

The painful love that he could not bring himself to erase nor indulge in. The longing for the false kindness from the Demon King to become real. The way that he clung so desperately to the words laced and dripping with lies, everything else becoming senseless to him like a fly in amber.

_"I value you, Futakuchi-kun."_

_"I would not like it if you left me."_

Futakuchi had relished in those words, the words that he sometimes could delusion himself into thinking were real, genuine, truthful. Even when Oikawa had disappeared from the castle for days and then had returned with his robes smelling of smoke and blood and the reports of fifty more villages destroyed by the Demon King in his wake, Futakuchi had tried believe that the words had not been lies.

He could never fully bring himself to believe them.

But even as lies, they gave him life.

  
  
_Now there's gravel in our voices_  
_Glass is shattered from the fight_  


Before, Futakuchi had tried to stop the Demon King. He had tried so very hard, throwing caution to the wind and trying desperately to wake the benign, benevolent person that he had trusted and believed was still locked away inside the Demon King.

Each time, he had failed.

The Demon King had a short temper, and had disliked being talked back to. Futakuchi had barely enough time to glimpse the flash of red light before he was hurled across the hall into one of the stone pillars, which had cracked under the force of the impact. Even with the excruciating pain in his chest and the coppery taste of blood spilling over his lips, he had tried to dissuade the Demon King from the evils that he committed. The only response he had received had been a second flare of red magic, wrenching him up off the floor and dashing him back against the stone, bringing forth another wave of blood and agony.

 _In this tug of war, you'll always win_  
_Even when I'm right_

Futakuchi soon learned to relent. The Demon King calmed down as quickly as he had flared up, carrying his broken, limp body to a secluded wing of the castle where he had effortlessly healed all the wounds that he had inflicted.

 _"You are valuable to me,"_ the Demon King had said.

His hands had been soft and light on his body, his voice sweet and gentle, but Futakuchi had seen, as intended, the purposeful flicker of red light that swept over the Demon King's hand.

The threat had never been clearer.

 _'Cause you feed me fables from your head_  
_With violent words and empty threats_  


Sometime after Futakuchi abandoned the track of time, the Demon King began to act differently around him, in a way that he didn't treat any other servant or fellow with. If Futakuchi had been able to comprehend the actions from a logical point of view, if the Demon King had been a human and not responsible for the death of possible millions, then he would have called it love.

But everything about them had been woven from lies, and this lie had been woven the thickest of them all.

Back then, Futakuchi had still tried. He had still in him the reserves of compassion and empathy and anger that compelled him to forcefully stop the Demon King from exiting the castle to annihilate the lives of more innocents. Back then, Futakuchi had still thought there was hope.

Even through the blinding pain that streaked through his body and made him numb to the cold flagstones on his skin and the wetness of blood staining his clothes, Futakuchi had still tried.

_"Oikawa - you can still stop. You can still ... go back. I know you can change."_

_"You know it doesn't have to be like this."_

_"Listen, please, Oikawa -"_

But it had always ended in the same way. The Demon King would bring him, immobilized with agony, up into the castle, and heal him, and caress his face, his body, whispering those sweet, blissful lies with a kiss that tasted of blood.

 _And it's sick that all these battles_  
_Are what keeps me satisfied_

There had come a point where Futakuchi could not imagine anything else. The Oikawa that he had known before was severed entirely, a completely different entity to the Demon King. To him, they had ceased to be the same person in two different timelines - they were separate beings fully different to one another.

From then on, the Demon King had ceased to be Oikawa.

Futakuchi had long since stopped calling the Demon King by the name of the child he had once been.

The Demon King had noticed, that had been certain.

That the times where Futakuchi had tried to change the Demon King's ways were starting to fade into his distant memories.

 _So maybe I'm a masochist_  
_I try to run but I don't want to ever leave_  


There had been one night, when the night sky was dark with the shadow of a new moon, when the Demon King had asked Futakuchi if he desired to leave.

The sudden mention of the impossible had broken the gates to the memories that Futakuchi had been subconsciously suppressing for so long. He had wanted to say yes, wanted it so badly - he had wanted more than ever, more than anything/i/, just to leave, to depart from the castle and leave everything behind locked away in those gloomy stone walls, to return back to the brightness of his guild and the warmth of familiar friendship and the comfort of home. To be away from the repeating cycle of pain and threat, from the web of lies that he had long since ceased to struggle to escape from.

And yet, when his answer came, quiet and clear and unwavering - _"No, my lord."_ \- Futakuchi had not known why.

The Demon King had smiled at that - a cold, calculating, gauging smile, and then Futakuchi had let himself go as the hands that he had become to accustomed to roamed over his body once more.

 _This is why_ , he had thought.

 _'Til the walls are going up_  
_In smoke with all our memories_

The love of lies. The touches that were as transparent as glass, the words that had been as meaningful as the ones of the wind.

When he had searched inside himself for the emotion that had been swelling and flooding and overflowing before, there is only a flat, grey emptiness.

 _Just gonna stand there and watch me burn_  
_But that's all right because I like the way it hurts_

Futakuchi cannot remember the last time that he has tried to stop the Demon King from rampaging across the lands. He cannot remember the last time he has ever even thought about trying to stop him, about trying to leave. His emotions are not there to speak for him anymore, and without them, Futakuchi lives off the lies that he is fed, cold, tasteless, life-giving lies.

He has watched hundreds, perhaps even thousands of villages burn to the ground. The Demon King will tell him to kill, and he would kill. The villagers at first pleaded with him, begging for help, but then less and less people started to see a sliver of mercy in him, and in only a short time, the same hateful, fearful looks that had been reserved for the Demon King were used to look upon him.

Now, even the servants at the castle lower their heads in his presence.

He does not remember how to react when Kuroo announces the arrival of a group of "heroes" at the foot of the castle. The Demon King beckons him, and he obeys.

 _"Do not let them into the castle,"_ he says, so Futakuchi will not let them into the castle. The Demon King was not Oikawa. This is a fact that he had told himself long ago, and had made himself believe - the Oikawa that was his hero and friend would not return. But Futakuchi would protect this remnant of Oikawa, this small sliver of a shadow of the person he once knew. It is the only thing he can do for Oikawa, now.

His footsteps echo alone on the cold flagstones as he walks out into the front courtyard, his sword hanging heavy at his side.

 _Just gonna stand there and hear me cry_  
_But that's all right because I love the way you lie_

Despite himself, Futakuchi recognizes the tall, white-haired, stoic hero instantly. He remembers the countless quests they had completed together, the nights spent dancing in the darkened streets during the annual festivals, the brightness of the days together in their village, and the memory of what could have been a pitiful, agonizing longing stirs in his heart. But he remains unmoving, standing at the top of the steps and staring down at the band of heroes.

Aone tries to call up to him.

 _"We can save you,"_ he pleads. _"Come with us. We will protect you. We can go home."_

Aone's voice is unnaturally desperate, his face full of despair and hope and worry in a mix of compassion that Futakuchi has not seen for so long.

Futakuchi is reminded of himself, begging for the Demon King to change. He remains unresponsive to Aone's words.

He remembers the Demon King's words. _"You are valuable to me, Futakuchi-kun."_

His sword scraping against the metal of its sheath rings loud in the near-empty courtyard. It is heavy in his hands when he draws it and holds it in front of him, blade pointed towards the group of heroes on the ground.

_"You are not going past this point."_

Even to his own ears, his voice sounds emotionless, robotic. It doesn't sound anything like his own.

The raven-haired hero with the green cape steps out to the front, drawing an arrow from his quiver and nocking it to his bow. _"Get out of the way, please, Aone-san."_ The point is directed up at him, the sharpened steel glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. Futakuchi looks inside himself for the fear that should have come, but nothing stirs.

Aone tries again, his eyes begging as he looks up to Futakuchi.

_"I know you're there."_

_"Come back home."_

_"Everyone is waiting for us."_

_"Go with me."_

_"It can be like how it was before."_

_"Kenji. Please."_

Some part of Futakuchi tries desperately to _feel_ , to accept and run down the steps and _away_. But he does not remember how to do that.

The Demon King's voice echoes in his head.

_"We protect each other, don't we, Futakuchi-kun?"_

Futakuchi makes no response, and the small, orange-haired hero gently tugs the despairing Aone to the side. Out of the way of the raven-haired hero's arrow.

 _"We are going in,"_ the small hero says loudly. _"We will defeat the Demon King and nobody is stopping us!"_

There is a heavy, stifling numbness weighing down on his heart. Futakuchi closes his eyes, wondering if this is emotion. He raises his sword, the leather handle soft and worn from use, the blade heavy and sharp in the air, and he is reminded of the past.

A sound cuts through the air - something akin to the crack of a whip. Futakuchi recognizes the sound.

An arrow being released.

 

..

 

**Author's Note:**

> I used the lyrics of this song for inspiration but when I was proofreading it again I realized that the lyrics and the title didn't really match the story so I had to go over it and keep on changing things xD I hope it didn't turn out too weird 
> 
> (For the fanart, I know that I drew Futakuchi holding the sword with his left hand even though I'm pretty sure he's right handed, please pretend not to notice xD) (Also Cassielle is my other username if anyone is wondering, it's the name I use to sign my fanarts, I use too many usernames for my own good I'm sorry)


End file.
